Books in the Perspectives on the Art and Architectural History of the United States Capitol series

Like the ancient Roman Pantheon, the U.S. Capitol was designed by its political and aesthetic arbiters to memorialize the virtues, events, and persons most representative of the nation's ideals-an attempt to raise a particular version of the nation's founding to the level of myth.

In 1910 John Merven Carrere, a Paris-trained American architect, wrote, "Learning from Paris made Washington outstanding among American cities." The five essays in Paris on the Potomac explore aspects of this influence on the artistic and architectural environment of Washington, D.C.,

The United States Capitol is a national cultural icon, and among the most visually recognized seats of government in the world. The past quarter century has witnessed an explosion of scholarly interest in the art and architectural history of the Capitol.

Like the ancient Roman Pantheon, the U.S. Capitol was designed by its political and aesthetic arbiters to memorialize the virtues, events, and persons most representative of the nation's ideals-an attempt to raise a particular version of the nation's founding to the level of myth.

In 1910 John Merven Carrere, a Paris-trained American architect, wrote, "Learning from Paris made Washington outstanding among American cities." The five essays in Paris on the Potomac explore aspects of this influence on the artistic and architectural environment of Washington, D.C.,

While the majority of scholarship on early Washington focuses on its political and physical development, in Incidental Architect Gordon S. Brown describes the intellectual and social scene of the 1790s and early 1800s through the lives of a prominent couple whose cultural aspirations served as both model and mirror for the city's own.

The subject matter and iconography of much of the art in the U.S. Capitol forms a remarkably coherent program of the early course of North American empire, from discovery and settlement to the national development and westward expansion that necessitated the subjugation of the indigenous peoples.In